Users of manual wheelchairs face many challenges and frustrations. Among these is the constant need to lock and unlock their wheels as they go through their normal daily activities. Something as simple as getting a gallon of milk from the refrigerator can required multiple lock/unlock cycles. For instance, a wheelchair user would have to lock before opening the door, unlock to navigate to the milk, lock to pick up the milk, unlock to navigate to the door, lock to close the door, unlock to navigate to a table, and lock to pour the milk. Similar steps are required to put the milk back into the refrigerator. Related art systems require manual activation and deactivation their locks, resulting in inconvenience to users. Accordingly, it is desirable to provide wheelchair locks that automatically lock and unlock the wheels in an easy, intuitive manner.
Therefore, according to certain aspects of the disclosure there is provided various designs for an automatic wheelchair locking mechanisms.
Moreover, certain improvements to automatic wheelchair locks may be provided using one or more of lock plates, hub connectors, magnetic persistent drivers, and certain rotation mechanisms. One or more of these features have independent use in various applications other than wheel-chair mechanisms. These features are independently within the scope of the present disclosure.